Do you feel lost on your weight & wellness path?

Could you use a map?

Sometimes we feel lost
along the way. We don’t know what to do. Or we know what to do but just don’t
or can’t do it. Or we don’t know why we eat the way we eat. Or we know why but
still can’t stop.

I’ve spent more than
16 years and counting on this path of weight and wellness, personally and
professionally. I would like to share a “map” that I’ve shared with
patients and used in group visits over the past year and half. My hope is that
it may in some small or large way help you move in the direction of your weight
and wellness goals.

We begin at the end of
the dead end road, with the natural, negative consequences of having become
imbalanced. The following is a list of what actual patients have shared over
the last 18 months:

Our desire is to back
ourselves out of this dead end road. What happened in our body before these
consequences? We accumulated excess fat, or inflammation, or we were
sedentary.

Backtracking
further… how does the body become inflamed? Lots of ways, but eating
inflammatory foods like processed/refined sugar & flour, and also stress
are two major causes of inflammation. How do we accumulate excess fat? It’s
complicated but the primary way is by taking in more calories than we burn
up.

Why do we do things
that we don’t want, even after we have been educated that they cause
inflammation, weight gain, and all sorts of problems? Why do we go down the
road toward the dead end?

Let’s travel a step further back from the dead end: In the moment, as many patients say, we “give our excuses.” We can call these our rationalizations, justifications, minimizations, “cognitive distortions”. We find they are illogical, irrational, “sabotaging” thoughts. Here is a list of examples from patients, see which ones you identify with. My favorite one ever was “I ate Italian bread because it was St. Patrick’s Day”. A few of the most popular excuses were; “I will start tomorrow or Monday”, “I Don’t Care”, “I Deserve it”, “Holidays”, “Irrational/Illogical thoughts (tell ourselves crazy stuff)”, “I already messed up”, “I exercised yesterday”, ” I’m getting rid of it / Don’t want to waste”, “This will make me feel better”, “I lost weight”, “I’m fat anyway”. (For a complete list of “excuses” given see the attached list.)

Let’s travel one more
step back down the road, away from the dead end: Where do these thoughts come
from? What must have been happening in our mind right before we started having
these thoughts? The truth is that in that moment, we simply wanted to
eat/drink/sit more than we didn’t. We wanted the desired effect more than we
wanted to avoid the undesired effect of the action. What did we really want?
Was it truly food, drink, or being sedentary? Knowing the negative
consequences? Here is what patients have said: We want/need (desire, crave,
have an urge for): comfort, love, companionship, feeling good/better,
satisfaction, a “fix”, numbing.

Let’s take another
step back down the road…In short, if we wanted to feel comfort, we must have
been feeling discomfort. In what ways might we be feeling uncomfortable?
Physically we might feel pain, illness, too hot or cold, too tired or too
sedentary, hungry, thirsty, too full, or any other physical discomfort.
Emotionally we might have felt angry, sad, afraid, guilty or any other
uncomfortable emotion.

How do we learn to go
down the road less and less often? The answer goes by many names but learning
to connect with a place inside ourselves from which we respond, rather than
react to life, literally puts us on a new road. First we learn how to find this
part of ourselves. It is sometimes called awareness, presence, consciousness,
inner self, true self, higher self, being, essence, (some patients call it
spirit or soul). Here we find new resources like self-reflection, the ability
to be in NOW (Notice, Observe, Witness), wisdom, integrity, authenticity,
acceptance, honesty, ease, power, strength, solutions, humility, truth,
clarity, etc. From here we are able to move from old reactions to new responses
that take the form of thoughts, actions and interactions. Through this practice
of what can be called mind-body medicine, we find ourselves going less far down
the road, less often, for less time.
Sound too good to be true? This has been true
for myself (and it’s a curvy, bumpy, windy road!) for over sixteen years. And
it has been true for many patients who have chosen to take this “road less
traveled.” I invite you to bring your questions and comments to your next
visit!